The present invention relates to a deceleration control apparatus and method for controlling deceleration of an automotive vehicle in accordance with a traveling state of the vehicle.
Various deceleration control apparatuses have been proposed for automotive vehicles to prevent understeering during a vehicle turn. One type of vehicle deceleration control apparatus is configured to determine a vehicle safety speed according to the turning state of a vehicle and, if the actual vehicle speed exceeds the determined safety speed, to automatically perform deceleration control on the vehicle in such a manner that the actual vehicle speed becomes lower than or equal to the safety speed. Japanese Patent No. 3133770 discloses another type of vehicle deceleration control apparatus that is configured to obtain information about the conditions of a curved road ahead of a vehicle from a navigation or infrastructure system and, if the vehicle speed is too high for the curved road conditions to start performing deceleration control on the vehicle before the vehicle comes into the curved road.
Vehicle collision avoidance systems have also been proposed, which perform deceleration control according to the approach of a vehicle to an obstacle in order to avoid a collision of the vehicle with the obstacle or to reduce a collision speed between the vehicle and the obstacle.
Furthermore, vehicle braking systems have been proposed to control a braking force distribution between front and rear vehicle wheels, or estimate a vehicle load shift based on vehicle longitudinal and lateral acceleration under braking and then control a braking force distribution according the estimated load shift, for stabilization of vehicle braking behavior.